It may be a while before we see another sequel in the core X-Men film series, but Fox has a few exciting prospects to keep the franchise kicking along, including Logan, Deadpool 2 and, last but far from least, Josh Boone’s New Mutants spinoff. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the writer and director says he and co-writer Knate Gwaltney originally pitched the project as a trilogy — a concept that’s hardly far-fetched for a few reasons, not the least of which is that the studio kind of needs some new and engaging X-Men properties to keep things fresh. There’s only so many times you can reboot Professor X & Co.

Boone participated in a chat with Creative Screenwriting about…well, that should be obvious — but during the interview, the director of The Fault in Our Stars and Fox’s upcoming New Mutants movie spoke a bit about the latter and revealed that he pitched the X-Men spinoff to executives as a trilogy of films:

After I made The Fault in Our Stars, we made Fox a comic book. It walked them through a trilogy of New Mutant films that would build on each other. We used this program called Comic Life, and took all the images we had loved from the series and strung them together to show them the movie we wanted to do.

We brought it to [producer] Simon [Kinberg] and he really liked it. We’ve been going for the past year and a half to get it ready, and I’m about to go location scout and we have a release date now.

Speaking of Kinberg: Not long ago, the X-Men writer and producer said that New Mutants will begin filming early next year. He also confirmed previous rumors that James McAvoy’s Professor X has a role in the film — or at least in the current iteration of the screenplay.

As for Boone’s comment about securing a release date, that’s certainly new, since Fox has yet to officially announce a date, though they do have a couple of slots on their 2018 schedule for untitled Marvel projects. Boone has already teased several characters for his New Mutants lineup, including Wolfsbane, Magik and Cannonball, but what about the villain? When Boone nostalgically recalls reading the comics with Gwaltney in his Creative Screenwriting chat, he drops an interesting name:

We had loved this X-Men spinoff, The New Mutants. We had loved Bill Sienkiewicz’s run with Chris Claremont that had Demon Bear. It was really dark, interesting, and different from the typical X-Men stories that we had read.

Could Demon Bear be the villain in Boone’s New Mutants movie? It’s possible, especially since he has a trilogy loosely mapped out — though that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a done deal with Fox. But if Boone’s first film is a hit, you can bet we’re definitely getting a sequel or two.

More From Classic Rock Q107